market | Environment.org

Editor’s Note: This post is the first post in a multi-part series exploring some of the key sustainable agriculture and food systems challenges that the farm bill can address. Through a series of posts comparing the House and Senate Agriculture Committees’ proposals, we provide an assessment of how each chamber’s bill would address a given challenge, and our recommended path forward. Future posts will explore how the next farm bill can tackle issues in meat processing, crop insurance, organic and sustainable agriculture research, and more.

Local Agriculture Market Program

The farm bill has a longstanding history of supporting market development for local producers and food businesses through grant programs such as the Value-Added Producer, Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion, and more recently, the Regional Food System Partnership programs. Over time, Congress has authorized programs to respond to …

Virginia has the biggest data center market in the world. Can it also decarbonize its grid?

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| Pollution

While short-lived, the denial came as a surprise.

This March, Loudoun County, a suburb of Washington, D.C. in northern Virginia that is home to the greatest concentration of data centers in the world, made an unexpected move: It rejected a proposal to let a company build a bigger data center than existing zoning automatically allowed.

“At some point we have to say stop,” said Loudoun Supervisor Michael Turner during the meeting, as reported by news site LoudounNow. “We do not have enough power to power the data centers we have.”

County supervisors would later reverse the decision, approving a smaller version of the project. But the initial denial sent ripples throughout Virginia, where concern over the rapid growth of data centers and what that means for the state’s ambitious decarbonization goals is growing.

“It is really a salient …

Release: NSAC Applauds Final Rule on Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act

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| Sustainability

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Zaks

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

press@sustainableagriculture.net

Tel. 347.563.6408

Release: NSAC Applauds Final Rule on Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity under the Packers and Stockyards Act

Washington, DC, March 5, 2024 – Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) applauded Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for the publication of a final rule: Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act. This is the final policy from USDA to modernize the Packers and Stockyards Act (P&SA) following a public comment period to a proposed rule in 2022, a process set in-motion by President Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy.

“This is an important and long-awaited step to protect the rights and agency of livestock and poultry producers,” said Billy Hackett, NSAC Policy Specialist. “The deceptive

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